Paterson Aide’s Quick Rise Draws Scrutiny

David W. Johnson, right, with Gov. David A. Paterson last February, has become increasingly important on the governor’s staff.Credit
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

David W. Johnson has worked for Gov. David A. Paterson for much of his adult life. He began as a young, ambitious intern from Harlem when Mr. Paterson was a state legislator. He rose to be Mr. Paterson’s driver, serving as a kind of protector and scheduler.

In recent months, however, Mr. Johnson’s ascent has been striking: he is now one of the most senior people in the governor’s administration, paid $132,000. He is described as Mr. Paterson’s closest confidant, a man with a designated room for his overnight stays in the Executive Mansion, and a broadening role in areas like campaign strategy, government initiatives and the management of the governor’s staff.

A review of Mr. Johnson’s rise and his history, undertaken after he emerged as perhaps the man closest to the state’s chief executive, shows that he was twice arrested on felony drug charges as a teenager, including a charge of selling cocaine to an undercover officer in Harlem.

The examination of his background, based on interviews and records, shows he has at least one other arrest, for misdemeanor assault in the 1990s, although there is very little publicly available about that case.

In a statement, Mr. Paterson noted how long ago the drug arrests had happened. “David Johnson has demonstrated, over the course of his adult life, that people can change their personal circumstances and achieve success when given a second chance,” he said. “I will not turn my back on someone because of mistakes made as a teenager.”

Mr. Johnson, 37, has also on three occasions been involved in altercations with women, two of which led to calls to the police. As recently as October, the police responded to a complaint of harassment at a Bronx address of a woman involved with him. It is unclear if the altercation was verbal or physical or both, but the case is listed as closed.

In 2001, when Mr. Paterson was a state senator, Mr. Johnson, according to a person who was present, punched a girlfriend outside the senator’s Harlem office. No arrest resulted, and Mr. Johnson, through a spokesman for the governor, said that he never touched the woman, that she had come to the office inappropriately and that she had been asked to leave by others. He declined recent requests for interviews.

The woman involved, who insisted on anonymity, said in a recent interview that Mr. Johnson had gotten violent with her in the episode. She said she did not file a formal report, but said she had filed an earlier domestic violence complaint to the police about Mr. Johnson. She declined to offer evidence of that.

A spokesman for Mr. Paterson said Mr. Johnson underwent a standard background check by the State Police in 2008, which found no criminal record. Regarding the October incident, the spokesman, Peter E. Kauffmann, said, “The governor looked into the matter, and the complaint has been withdrawn.” He said Mr. Paterson planned no further inquiry into Mr. Johnson’s history.

Mr. Paterson has made domestic violence a key issue in his career; when he was lieutenant governor, it was among his signature causes. In 2008, just a few months after taking office as governor, he signed a major expansion of New York’s domestic violence law to allow judges to issue civil protection orders against people in dating relationships, in addition to those who are married.

Last October, two weeks before the episode involving Mr. Johnson and the Bronx woman, Mr. Paterson opened a campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence, gathering with advocates for a lighting ceremony at the Empire State Building.

He has also become increasingly vocal in his criticism of former Senator Hiram Monserrate, who was convicted of misdemeanor assault last fall for dragging his companion down the hallway of his apartment building. On Friday, the governor praised the Senate’s move to expel Mr. Monserrate and spoke at length about the pressures that victims of domestic violence face from their batterers.

“This seemed like a classic case of a woman who was intimidated, who didn’t really understand what her independence could be, and was victimized,” he said of the Monserrate case, adding, “The reality is that it’s really just a prelude to another attack, in many instances.”

Mr. Johnson’s increasing prominence, and Mr. Paterson’s reliance on him, have worried some veteran aides to the governor, who themselves are trying to assist Mr. Paterson as he faces an enormous fiscal crisis and a daunting election effort. They would not speak by name, but more than four current or former officials expressed concern that Mr. Johnson and another aide, a former state trooper, had become the governor’s innermost circle and were simply not best equipped to help him tackle the multiple challenges facing him.

Some heads of significant government agencies have said they feel they have to go through Mr. Johnson, often known as D. J., to get to the governor. And several current and former administration officials said that Mr. Johnson’s dressing down of the governor’s Washington office in September contributed to the departure of several seasoned people from the office.

“I started getting messages from D. J. telling me to call certain players in my industry,” said one former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing the governor.

Photo

David W. Johnson, right, with Gov. David A. Paterson last February, has become increasingly important on the governor’s staff.Credit
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Mr. Johnson, the official said, started to manage administration press conferences, dictating the order and seating of speakers and calling agencies to request they draft statements on particular issues.

“We were all quite surprised about D. J. taking more of a policy role,” another former official said. “It seemed like it was a long way to come in a short period of time for a guy who had been the governor’s wing man.”

Recently, the role evolved further, as Mr. Johnson began shaping campaign strategy.

Bill Lynch, one of the governor’s longtime political strategists, said that he talked campaign strategy with Mr. Johnson and that it had been Mr. Johnson’s idea to hold a series of community conversations in New York City late last year.

Asked what made Mr. Johnson qualified to be involved in campaign strategy, Mr. Lynch said: “I don’t know much about his history other than his working for the governor. But as far as I’m concerned, his instincts on these campaign things are good, if not damn near perfect.”

Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a Harlem Democrat, said of Mr. Johnson: “I look at him as a gatekeeper. I actually think he’s done pretty well.

“He’s been with David for years. He is a good filter for David. David trusts him. And his influence has grown.”

Mr. Paterson first hired Mr. Johnson as an intern in 1999. His role, according to a co-worker from those days, was to be an advance man and to perform constituent services. He worked only about 10 hours a week but was considered “gung-ho,” the co-worker said, always volunteering to attend town-hall-style meetings and the like. He graduated from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in 2002.

“He wanted to be in the mix,” the co-worker said, “and because he was from Harlem, he had a natural connection with people there.”

An Imposing Figure

Mr. Johnson, the colleague said, was also valued because of the imposing figure he cast. At 6-foot-7, with a booming voice, he made Mr. Paterson, who is legally blind, feel secure, and so he was often scheduled to travel with him.

Mr. Johnson also helped keep people in line on those occasions when a troublesome constituent threatened to raise a ruckus in the Harlem office.

“Every now and then it was good to have a big guy in the office,” the colleague said.

Mr. Johnson eventually became Mr. Paterson’s driver, and at that point their relationship was further cemented.

“When you’re going back and forth to Albany a few times a week, once you get past Exit 17, you’re spending a lot of time alone with the other person in that car and you’re going to talk,” the colleague said.

Mr. Johnson’s first known arrest was in 1989 when he was 16; he was handled as a youthful offender, and the records sealed.

Two years later, when he was 18, he was arrested on drug charges, this time after selling crack cocaine to an undercover officer, according to people with knowledge of the episode.

The arrest by a 23rd Precinct officer occurred on the corner of Madison Avenue and East 107th Street, about a block from his mother’s apartment. It led to his indictment five days later on a single count of criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree with intent to sell, a felony for which he could have received up to 25 years in prison, the people with knowledge of the episode said.

Three months later, he pleaded guilty to a lesser felony, attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, a felony with a maximum of 15 years; he was sentenced to five years of probation, which a law enforcement official said he completed without incident. Mr. Johnson was treated as a youthful offender, and the records of the case were sealed.

Photo

Governor Paterson and his aide David Johnson, left, walked up the steps of the state Capitol in June 2008.Credit
Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Mr. Johnson’s disputed encounters with women came to involve at least one senior aide to Mr. Paterson in 2001. Woody Pascal, then Mr. Paterson’s chief of staff, interrupted the altercation between Mr. Johnson and the woman who was then his girlfriend outside the Harlem office. Mr. Pascal said he offered the woman counseling.

“Mr. Johnson and a companion had some kind of dispute, and I broke it up,” Mr. Pascal said in an interview. “I sent Mr. Johnson in one direction, and I counseled her, and that was the end of the dispute.”

The police were not called.

The woman said Mr. Pascal “handled it all.”

She said she had filed a police report against Mr. Johnson for domestic violence before the episode outside Mr. Paterson’s office, but nothing ever happened to him.

“It was a long time ago,” she said. “They didn’t take things as seriously back then.”

Mr. Paterson’s office encouraged The New York Times to speak to Deneane Brown, a woman it said had been present for the episode.

Ms. Brown, who now works for the State Department of Housing and Community Renewal, said she saw a brief part of what she described as a heated argument, or lover’s spat, but no violence. She said she had remained friends with Mr. Johnson.

“If there had been anything violent, I’m trained in domestic violence, so I would have had a duty to file a report,” she said.

Deemed a Dating Dispute

Asked last week about the episode, Mr. Paterson said he was not aware of it. But the governor recalled a separate episode involving Mr. Johnson and a woman, which he said also occurred in 2001, where the police were called.

In Mr. Paterson’s description, Mr. Johnson was having a dispute with a woman he was dating, and he visited her home. When he arrived, the police were there and spoke to him.

He said Mr. Johnson told him of the episode when Mr. Paterson was about to become lieutenant governor on Jan. 1, 2007, because his staff members would be subject to background checks.

“I asked him, Was there an arrest? ‘No.’ Was there a complaint? ‘No,’ ” Mr. Paterson recalled. “There was nothing. So it just sounded to me like an argument between two people.”

The governor said he was aware that Mr. Johnson might have had another problematic encounter with a girlfriend last October in the Bronx. He described it, essentially, as a bad breakup.

Interviews with people who have been briefed on the police report indicate that the police responded at 9:50 p.m. on Halloween night, and that the dispute involved the woman’s costume and whether Mr. Johnson had torn it off her or menaced her further. Mr. Johnson was gone, the interviews suggest, by the time the police arrived.

The woman, in a brief interview this month, said that there had been an incident and that she had not seen Mr. Johnson since. She would not comment further.

Asked whether Mr. Johnson’s history had been considered before his most recent promotion, to director of executive services — he received a raise of $23,850 — Mr. Paterson said: “Obviously, it was a breakup. They know a number of people in common, and it just sounded like breakups you hear about all the time.”

Mr. Paterson also said that Mr. Johnson had grown significantly over the years and that he did not believe that Mr. Johnson had problems with women.

“In D. J.’s case, other than, you know, that he had broken up with a few women that he went out with, I have not found him to be that kind of person,” the governor said.

Referring to the October episode, he added: “I think in anybody’s history, you can come up with a couple incidents where they acted improperly. And this may, and I accentuate may, have been one of them.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 17, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: For Paterson Confidant, Fast Rise and Questions. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe